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Faculty Profiles

Steven Norris

Education

Biography

Steven Norris gained his appreciation of the living world in the deserts and mountains of his native New Mexico. Much of this experience he owes to his father.

He attended college at The Colorado College (BA, Liberal Arts), where most classes in his major – Biology – involved field trips and significant outdoor activities in the surrounding Rocky Mountains. In graduate school – Oklahoma State University (MSc, Zoology) and Arizona State University (PhD, Zoology) – Dr. Norris specialized in ichthyology, initially in fish behavior, later in fish systematics and phylogenetics. Dr. Norris held postdoctoral positions through the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Division of Fishes and The Royal Museum of Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium). During this time, he was privileged to work closely with some of the old guard of 20th Century European and North American Ichthyology.

Dr. Norris is a general and systematic ichthyologist who is interested in nearly all aspects of the biology, ecology, evolution and conservation of fishes. His research activities have included work on the systematics, osteology, phylogenetics and biogeography of African freshwater fishes, the fishes of western North America and Mexico and arid land fishes in general, and the ecology of swampland fishes of the USA.

Natural History Museums and Collections have been at the center of much of Dr. Norris’s professional experience – both in their utilization as a researcher and in their management and development as a curator.

His research on African North American and Mexican freshwater fishes has been published in regional and international meeting abstracts, and in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals and monographs series.

Dr. Norris coauthored sections of Freshwater Fishes of Mexico by Robert Rush Miller, W.L. Minckley and Steven Mark Norris (University of Chicago Press, 2005), and edited the entire tome for publication following the deaths of his two co-authors.

Dr. Norris has served peer-reviewed, scientific journals in his field. He was a member of the Editorial Board of Copeia (Journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists), and (for two years) was Assistant Editor for General Ichthyology for the Journal of Fish Biology.

Dr. Norris is proud to be an Adjunct Research Associated of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Division of Fishes, and former NSF-NATO Fellow at the Royal Museum of Central Africa, Ichthyology Laboratory.